Scientists get tickets to ride with space tourists

In the first deals of their kind, a scientific institute has committed to flying its researchers on spaceships built for suborbital tourist flights. The idea is for scientists to carry out experiments on their flights, pioneering what could become a popular way of doing research.

Box of rocks

Under the agreements, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo will carry at least two researchers from SwRI. SpaceShipTwo can carry up to six passengers at a time, whether researchers or tourists, and can travel above 100 kilometres from Earth, considered the boundary of space. Flights will include a few minutes of weightlessness.

SwRI researchers will also fly on at least six flights of XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx Mark I vehicle. This has room for only one passenger per flight and reaches just 60 kilometres above Earth.

Stern and two of his SwRI colleagues, Daniel Durda and Cathy Olkin, have already started training for suborbital flights.

They plan to carry out three experiments during the flights. One involves monitoring the researchers’ blood pressure throughout the flight, while a second involves monitoring a box of rocks to find out how rubble behaves in the low gravity of asteroids.

Finally, a third experiment will test the performance of an ultraviolet imager that could be used to scrutinise planets and other objects at wavelengths that are blocked by Earth’s atmosphere.

Strong market

Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said at the press conference that he expects other scientists will be interested in doing research on SpaceShipTwo. “We think it’s going to be a very strong market for the company,” he said.

Neither SpaceShipTwo nor Lynx Mark I have flown to space yet, although a precursor of SpaceShipTwo, SpaceShipOne, flew to space three times in 2004.

Whitesides said Virgin Galactic hopes to send SpaceShipTwo to space on test flights in late 2011 or early 2012. But he did not commit to a start date for passenger flights, including those that the researchers would fly on, which he said will come only after the vehicle has been thoroughly tested.

Andrew Nelson of XCOR Aerospace was less specific about flight dates. The Lynx Mark I prototype is still under construction, but the rocket engine – perhaps its most crucial part – has been fired dozens of times and is “very, very mature”, he said.